Posted
by
samzenpuson Friday December 28, 2012 @03:00AM
from the ice-is-not-nice dept.

A British plan to blast a path through more than two miles of ice to reach an Antarctic lake has been suspended because of technical problems. From the article: "In a move that clears the way for U.S. and Russian teams to take the lead, Professor Martin Siegert said technical problems and a lack of fuel had forced the closure on Christmas Day of the 7-million-pound ($11 million) project, which was looking for life forms and climate change clues in the lake-bed sediment.
'This is of course, hugely frustrating for us, but we have learned a lot this year,' said Siegert of the University of Bristol, principal investigator for the mission, which was headed by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
'By the end, the equipment was working well, and much of it has now been fully field-tested,' he said on the BAS website."

The Chinese hole would also collapse upon itself after 50 hours of use while proponents of Chinese outsourcing let on that bringing all our money to China for poor quality goods is sustainable and desirable.

They are abandoning the project because they don't have enough fuel on site to be able to drill down to the lake.

This is because they are using hot water to melt their way downwards, which is fine, but much of the water is escaping sideways into cracks in the ice. This means they needed more water to reach their objective. The water has to be melted from ice collected on the surface, and that takes fuel. Not enough fuel: stop wasting everybody's time and money.

"... They're afloat in a bubble of pressurized air wedged against the underside of the Antarctic ice sheet: below them stretch the still, supercooled waters of Lake Vostok.They're waiting for a rendezvous...."

Given that one of the major controversies here is the danger of contamination of the lake (both for negating the scientific value, and the lake ecosystem itself)... Isn't the pursuance of 3 independent, parallel drilling projects solely in the name of national egos, a minor outrage?

Given that the lakes have not only been isolated from the rest of the terrestrial environment for eons, and from each other... no, it's not a minor outrage. It's good science to see how evolution has proceeded in each and how they are different from one another.

Don't mistake the media's preoccupation with "firsts" for the reasons behind the drilling.

They were probably digging near a certain mysterious and terrible mountain range. Upon breaking through into a large underground cavern, the team was set upon by some 4 foot albino penguins and a shoggoth.

British ingenuity pissed all over by lack of funds yet again. Being cynical and miserable is fun; but without a good does of U.S. level investment you can't come first. Second place with a better idea is shite.

There would be even more money for that crap if the investment money put into UK project was by UK companies and not US firms. I'd point to ARM in Cambridge to say that's how its done;but as Apple and VLSI are US based investors... bugger.